


225 miles and approx. 4hr 5 minutes of conversation on a Tuesday morning in March

by ElapsedSpiral



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Asperger Syndrome, Autism, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-21
Updated: 2012-04-21
Packaged: 2017-11-04 02:06:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElapsedSpiral/pseuds/ElapsedSpiral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: He feels like his cape got caught in the door of a vegetarian gastro-pub in Devon. He’s just a man now. John is polite enough not to comment. Of course. Of course he is, the doctor. The carer. Yet another handler.</p><p>Warnings: None really.</p><p>Author Notes: Mild spoiler for Sherlock's character from HoB but nothing from the actual plot. Very mild AU in the sense that Sherlock and John drive back to London instead of taking the train.</p>
            </blockquote>





	225 miles and approx. 4hr 5 minutes of conversation on a Tuesday morning in March

He feels like his cape got caught in the door of a vegetarian gastro-pub in Devon. He’s just a man now. John is polite enough not to comment. Of course. Of course he is, the doctor. The carer. Yet another handler.

Sherlock huffs his breath out. He’s not sure he can stand 218 miles of the mantra in his head: carercarercarerhandlerSpockcarerhandler.

Face to the window, he tests a few sentences silently.

Well? Why didn’t you say?

Yes. I know. It was obvious. Still took you long enough to deduce, doctor.

Glad to see you can deduce after all.

So you’re not wasting that medical degree then.

“When?” he finally blurts out. It’s none of the possibles. John darts him a glance before he sets his eyes on the road once again.

“Sorry?”

“When? When did,” Sherlock hates his tongue for betraying him. He takes a moment, a breath. Feels the chill where his exposed arms goose pimple. Missing their cape.

A sheep in a field to his right gets the full effect of his words before it’s out of sight, past and behind the car. They continue making progress. Check mirrors, move into fifth gear, check mirrors again. Hands at two and seven o’clock (sloppy, doctor).

“I’m not a high functioning sociopath.”

John’s squirming now too. Sherlock contemplates whether he should feel an affinity. Possibly sympathy. He knows he personally feels worse at the reaction.

“Yes, I know.”

There’s silence again, for a while. Sherlock briefly turns on the radio and explains why the news-reporter is actually the woman’s twin sister, filling in for her because her alcoholic sister is currently at home sobbing into the toilet after a particularly extreme drinking session. John smiles.

**187 miles to go**

They’re eating a disappointing breakfast of fruit salad at a motorway service station. There’s a small child crying to his right (and he knows where they lost their teddy bear. Mummy doesn’t). There’s a coach party to his left. Dutch. Flemish. They’re going to London too. They’ve also just come back from visiting Devon (Lord knows why).

He takes several attempts at skewering a grape in his little plastic bowl, the food darting away from his make-shift harpoon. He feels fumbling, feeble. The flair has gone. There’s the feeling that perhaps John was only ever humouring him. It’s not amazing, that little trick of his. It’s not fantastic or brilliant or anything of the sort. It’s just the price a discharged army doctor has to pay to get an affordable flat in central London.

Sherlock never picks his moment and so he just snaps when he misses the grape at a third pass. He startles the mother as she walks past (going back to McDonald’s in search of teddy. It’s in the bootthebootthebooththeboot you cretin).

“I overheard.”

John looks up, gnawing on a piece of pineapple, easily lanced with his black plastic fork.

“What?”

“I heard, you and,” Sherlock uses his fingers to put the last grape in his mouth, snapping his teeth on it, puncturing the skin, “Greg.”

“Oh?” John grows wary. He speaks first when Sherlock gets distracted once more by mummy saving the day, finding Teddy in the boot of the Civic (that’s not the original front passenger side door and daddy went to a dodgy, cowboy mechanic to get it replaced now, didn’t he? He caused the accident then, eh? And he lied, mummy, he doesn’t have inclusive insurance, just third party and-).

The doctor speaks softly.

“We don’t have to talk about it. Like I said, it’s all fine.”

Sherlock barks a laugh and a nearby cleaner (Ukrainian. Just received a letter from her mother this morning) starts, scowls, goes to empty another bin.

“At Angelo’s? You knew then?”

“No,” John disagrees placidly. Sherlock’s filled with the urge to hurt him. Hurt his placid, GP calm. He wonders if it is underscored with sympathy and pity like the one his mother took him to, the one who made sure mummy looked at him like a time bomb, not a son from thereon out.

“When?”

“I don’t know Sherlock,” John sighed, dropping the empty packaging into the bin beside him, “I didn’t note the time and the date. Perhaps a few weeks after moving in.”

He wants to know the day, the time, so he can retrospectively say of course. Of course it was then. Look at how changed John is now. Look how you have failed, Sherlock. Look how it’s different now. And look how he pities.

“Like I said,” John pipes up again, when Sherlock takes to staring at license plates, “We don’t need to discuss it.”

“I know. You can stop saying that.”

“Alright.”

“Did you tell Lestrade?” he’s not Greg. He doesn’t like the name so he reverts back to what he knows, “Surely the man isn’t capable of figuring something like out on his own account. I mean he couldn’t even-“

“I didn’t. He looked it up when you kept making constables cry at crime scenes.”

Everybody, quiet. Anderson, turn your back. Obvious. Elementary.

“I see,” Sherlock offers lamely as he throws his own breakfast in the bin. He ate a grand total of four grapes. The slimey soapiness of the melon was too much to bear.

“Sherlock,” John says and for the life of him Sherlock cannot tell a difference in the doctor’s gentle tone. Then again, he’s left his cape in a gastro-pub. Perhaps he’s lost his edge entirely. For the life of him, John sounds as-

Affectionate, tender, loving, tired, wearied, friendly, knowing, cautious – as ever.

“Emotion is alright. You can be emotional around me-“

“I know,” he snaps and he feels like Sophie, of the lost teddy (he overheard her name and again, that’s not cheating. It’s being observant). He purses his lips and wills John on. The man takes a moment to gather his patience.

“I know you know. I just wanted to say. No emotion is alright as well, but I’m not sure it’s healthy. The deduction is fine, so is the inference,” Sherlock appreciates that he separates those skills out, so few people do, “the dramatic flair is fine, so is the not speaking for days on end. The autism is fine and we can talk about it – now or later - or we don’t. Alright?”

Sherlock makes the point of returning John’s gaze and, with purposeful effort, smiles.

**86 miles to go**

The world has changed but is built along exactly the same lines as before. Perhaps, like at Baskerville, the fog is lifting. The world, fresh and new. Sherlock doesn’t like the poetry of the idea.

All he knows is his one great mystery is in tatters, like his cape. And yet, when he tells John he knows the gender and age of the last three people to have rented this jeep, John looks on with admiration, amusement and awe. As ever. As always.

It’s the world anew, and yet nothing’s changed.

**27 miles to go**

Sherlock feels the new under his skin. He recognises it. A boldness that has been missing for so long.

Of course, he is far bolder than most people as it stands – too bold. He was bold when he smirked silently at his college Master when he was sent down for appalling grades, manners and attendance at Sidney Sussex. He was bold when he invited himself onto that crime scene in Florida. He was bold when he went into that newsagent and printed 500 business cards saying “Sherlock Holmes – Consulting Detective” (a job title he had invented three minutes previously). But now he is bolder still.

He is not Lestrade’s to coddle. He is not his brother’s to be spied on. He is not Adler’s to pity. He is more than the sum of his parts. He is no longer Sherlock Holmes. He is Sherlock-Holmes-and-John-Watson.

With that comes the feeling, thrumming in his fingers, that things can change.

One day soon, he will remind John that he did not say that he wasn’t interested in men. Only that he was married to his work, first and foremost and always. Sherlock Holmes, however, harpoons pigs. He is not above adultery.

One day soon, he will say that he that he knows John isn’t gay but that that isn’t the point, is it? Nor is it the question.

One day soon, Sherlock will tell him that he has never been kissed. And it’s not because he’s Spock (also, never call me that again, John, he will say). It’s because he’s horrified of the logistics of a kiss – the angles and the precision with which faces meet. There is the potential for clashing teeth and bumped noses. Eyes are closed and he cannot possibly calculate what foreign lips will do if he cannot even see them. There will be hands and heat and the movement of torsos, the tilt of heads. He will not be able to predict any of it.

Now though. Now he has the boldness to say “John. I do not like the logistics of kissing. So please, hold your head perfectly still and close your eyes for me”. He will press a finger gently to the other’s lips, use it as a guide so that his own meet their target. And then the boldness will take over.

**Baker Street Tube Station.**

When they get onto the tube he decides he didn’t leave his cape in Devon. He left his armour.

He un-pops his collar which draws a smile from John. Sherlock follows the curves of the doctor’s lips with his eye. He notes the light flush that sparks in the man’s cheeks.

He’s bold, unburdened and he thinks, stepping out into the cold, bright winter sun of Baker Street “it’s one day soon”.


End file.
